Guinness World Records has recognised folding@home, a project that harnesses the spare processing power of Sony's PlayStation 3 to help understand the cause of diseases, as the world's most powerful distributed computing network. Nearly 700,000 PS3 owners have signed up to examine how the shape of proteins affects diseases such as Alzheimer's. The network has more than one petaflop of computing power - the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second. "To have folding@home recognized by Guinness World Records as the most powerful distributed computing network ever is a reflection of the extraordinary worldwide participation by gamers and consumers around the world and for that we are very grateful," said Professor Vijay Pande of Stanford University and a leader of the FAH project.